Remembering
by S J Smith-Evil Little Dog
Summary: Hohenheim remembers his first love  pre-series .


**Title: **Remembering

**Author:** S J Smith

**Rating:** K+

**Summary: ** Hohenheim remembers his first love. Prequel to the series.

**Disclaimer:** I'm just playing paper dolls here.

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><p>He remembers her, some nights, when the fire flickers just so, and he's taken back over the centuries to Xerxes. His master had many slaves, not just him, men, women, children, all of them dedicated to the betterment of the alchemist and his family. At least, that's what they'd mouthed when asked, unless they wanted to get the strap, or worse. At least his master had been kind, in his own way; he didn't usually break up families, or sell young children away from their parents. Still, he had the ability to do so, and it remained on their minds as they worked.<p>

Hohenheim had been Twenty-Three then, didn't even have a name before the dwarf in the flask gave him one. (Sometimes, he wonders where the dwarf came from, but he hadn't thought to ask then, and won't ask the next time he meets the creature the dwarf became.) He had been tasked with cleaning the alchemist's laboratory, with sweeping up and washing beakers and vials, with not breaking anything. That was important, not breaking anything, as there were liquids and chemicals and elements contained within glass jars and tubes that could have been dangerous if loosed within the lab. (And yet, the dwarf was allowed to stay there. Hohenheim wonders if his master had any clue just how dangerous the dwarf had been, or whether his sheer arrogance had lulled him into thinking of the dwarf as nothing more than a tool to use as he saw fit.)

There were beautiful women in the household, none so gorgeous as the alchemist's own daughter, though he'd taken care not to let anyone see him watching her. Twenty-Three knew what would happen to him if he were caught looking. The a strap would be the least of his worries. The alchemist had mentioned before that sometimes, castrated slaves were best at working in the lab with him, and had given Twenty-Three a lingering look. Instead, when he had some precious time to himself, Twenty-Three would sneak off to the kitchen, and try to cadge food from the pretty kitchen slave, Fifteen.

She said she'd been stolen away from Drachma, and had the dark hair and sloe eyes of that people, though at the time, Twenty-Three hadn't realized it. He just liked her voice and the peculiar way she spoke, but more than that, he liked the curves of her body, and the way he could coax wonderful sounds out of her throat when he touched her.

Twenty-Three hadn't realized his master had been keeping track of where he'd spent his time until the alchemist pulled him aside one late afternoon, taking him into the kitchen where he pointed at Fifteen and said, "You two, make a child."

They were given a room of their own in a building with the other breeding couples, no longer having to sleep in the men's or women's common barracks, and Twenty-Three had almost been convinced that nothing the glass-caged dwarf said could be nearly as interesting as what he and Fifteen learned from each other's bodies.

When Fifteen turned up pregnant, they'd been happy at first, but Fifteen - iAnye/i, she made him call her when they were alone, and in their little room – grew anxious as her body started changing. She didn't want their child born into slavery; she wanted their child to be free. "We could be free," she whispered in Twenty-Three's ear, "we could run away, and go to Drachma."

He'd been young and foolish, and willing to listen to her, even if a part of him thought she was wrong for thinking they could escape the alchemist. But he helped her squirrel away food, and trinkets that might be traded for their safe passage.

The dwarf seemed to realize something was going to happen, and cautioned Twenty-Three - iHohenheim/i - against his stupidity, then had recanted, and said that he was a fool, anyway, and would learn from his mistakes or die from them, whichever. It had frightened him, but Anye's desires held him in thrall, and the hope that his son (surely, the way the child fought against the confines of its mother's stomach, it had to be a son) would live as a free man.

On a moonless night, they agreed to set out; Anye leaving from the kitchen, and he from the laboratory. They would meet at the gate with passes into town that they'd stolen, and escape into the city. But that night, the alchemist seemed to be aware of something happening, and before Twenty-Three could reach the gate and Anye, she had been captured.

Hohenheim remembers his master's voice, the disappointment in it as he spoke so long ago. "You tried to escape me, to leave my kitchen. I gave you good food, and a good man, and didn't treat any better or worse than any other slave. Yet you betrayed me." He stood in front of Anye, who trembled, and had to be held upright by two guards. "You stole from my house, you stole from me." The alchemist walked around her, and said to his guards, "Take her to the auction, and have her sold. I will not put up with a slave who doesn't know her place."

Anye was dragged away, almost before Twenty-Three knew what was happening, almost before he realized that a heart could shatter from loss. He stood in place, watching as Anye disappeared out of the courtyard, her faint wails ringing back in his ears, and when he would have started forward, one of the older male slaves caught him and held him back, telling him to let her go, or face worse consequences.

The alchemist later called Twenty-Three to the laboratory. Rage at the loss of the unborn child made him savage that day, and Twenty-Three endured a beating from that fury, one that left him quivering and aching in a corner of the room, and his master panting and red-faced in anger. "Do not think you can escape me, Twenty-Three," he said, pointing a finger at him. "I hold you in the palm of my hand." He then ordered Twenty-Three to clean himself and the laboratory up, and get back to the men's common barracks, as he no longer had need of the private room.

Slaves have their own way of spreading news, and Twenty-Three caught rumors of Fifteen some months later; that she'd been sold to a traveling caravan, and died in childbirth; or that she'd given birth to a child, and had been given to another slave to produce more. He never saw her again, and her soul wasn't one of those within him after the dwarf made the Philospher's Stone.

Certain nights, moonless nights, when a cool breeze tickles down his spine, Hohenheim remembers, and thinks about the things that might have been.

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><p>-<em> end<em> -


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